Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will make it right again. Don’t suppose, however, that we have nothing to do. At Busselinck and Waterman’s trade is slacker still. It is a strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting the Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried—I mean Busselinck and Waterman—to do me out of the custom of Ludwig Stern. As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange, I will tell you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg, who always employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that out—I mean that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They had offered to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They are low fellows—nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop them. Any one in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern, “that we too would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for consideration on account of the long services of Last and Co.” [[11]]
I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years, has gained four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion dates from the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled Colonial produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won’t reduce the brokerage.
I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote:—
“That because of the many honoured commissions received from North Germany, our business transactions had been extended”—[it is the simple truth]—“and that this necessitated an augmentation of our staff”—[it is the truth: no more than yesterday evening our bookkeeper was in the office after eleven o’clock to look for his spectacles];—“that, above all things, we were in great want of respectable, educated young men to conduct the German correspondence. That, certainly, there were many young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed the requisite qualifications, but that a respectable firm”—[it is the very truth],—“seeing the frivolity and immorality of young men, and the daily increasing number of adventurers, and with an eye to the necessity of making correctness of conduct go hand in hand with correctness in the execution of orders”—[it is the truth, observe, and nothing but the truth],—“that such a firm—I mean Last and Co., coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal—could not be anxious enough in engaging new hands.”
All that is the simple truth, reader. Do you know [[12]]that the young German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar, has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman? Our Mary, like her, will be thirteen years old in September.
“That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler”—[Saffeler travels for Stern]—“that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr. Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in a Dutch house.”
“That I, mindful of this”—[here I referred again to the immorality of employés, and also to the history of that daughter of Busselinck and Waterman; it won’t do any harm to tell it],—“that I, mindful of this, wished, with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German correspondence of our firm.”
From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary; yet I said:—
“That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen mended in the house”—[that is the very truth, for Mary sews and knits very well],—and in conclusion I said, “that we were a religious family.”
The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans. I posted that letter. You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very well give his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our office. [[13]]I am very anxious for a reply. But to return to my book. Some time ago I walked one evening through Kalver Street, and stopped looking into a shop where a grocer was diligently sorting a quantity of—